[18] This is article has been specially written as a preface for Health Through Breathing, by Olga Lazarus, shortly to be published (1s. net).

To breathe correctly and sufficiently is to live more healthily. This dictum is incontrovertible, and it becomes my pleasant duty herein to demonstrate its truthfulness. And, after a careful perusal of the hundred exercises which the authoress has so clearly and succinctly described, I am still more convinced of the very great, one might almost say of the tremendous, importance of deep-breathing exercises. What has struck me so forcibly in this little book is the fact that there is no undue enthusiasm evident; no embellishment of the subject; no extravagant claims for the system advocated; just a plain sane, sober and intelligent description of procedures of immense value to all who would either keep, or improve, their health. The authoress has, as it were, laid before the reader a feast of good things in the way of physical culture, and leaves it at that. She seems to have brought into purview a splendid variation of the exercises, and indeed every mode of breathing and exercise likely to be beneficial—to those in health as out of it.

Reverting for a moment to the supreme importance of the subject, I may say that it has of late years come home to me more than ever, and with greater insistency, that innumerable ills of to-day are due to faulty breathing and lack of correct physical exercises generally. I wonder how many of us could conscientiously say that we devote fifteen or twenty minutes regularly every day to the system? And yet such a great deal could be done for health in that time! No, we “haven't time,” or we “oversleep ourselves so often,” or we make some such other flimsy excuse; but of course we ought to “make time,” we ought not to “oversleep ourselves.” The fact is, rather, that most of us are too lazy to go through the exercises, even though we may know of their transcendent benefit. In the words of the poet: “Let us, then, be up and doing”—that is, up in time in the morning in order to be going through exercises such as described in this little volume.

It is within my personal knowledge, and must be within the personal knowledge of every actively engaged physician, that but very few of us yet have any idea, in spite of all the teaching and the advocacy of it, of really deep and scientific breathing. If the system could be made quite general and enforced upon us—especially when young or adolescent—we should not see, as we do now, thousands walking about the streets whose nostrils are too narrow through insufficient breathing, whose lungs are not properly inflated as they inspire; and, as a consequence, who have neither the bloom nor the carriage of health.

Perhaps if I show here how vastly important it is for us to have our blood well oxygenated, it may be some sort of encouragement for Mrs Lazarus's readers to persevere with and work into their lives the system she advocates and describes.

If we did not renew the oxygen in our lungs to a sufficient extent, we should die in a few minutes. We can do without food for many days; without water for less days, but only for a few minutes without oxygen. Anything which tends to increase the intake of this vitally important element, whether deeper breathing or exercises, will have a very pronounced effect upon our general health. Now deep breathing is, par excellence, the way to bring about this desirable condition. It may interest the readers of this little book if I remind them that in the ordinary way the total capacity of the lungs is about 340 cubic inches; as a rule, the amount of air breathed amounts only to some 20 or 30 cubic inches, but this, by special effort, can be increased by some 110 cubic inches. Thus it is demonstrated how much more air we could take into the lungs by better and deeper breathing, thereby securing, sooner or later, a greater natural expansion of the lungs, with the result, of course, of improved health generally.

It would surprise most people if they tested their breathing capacity by the aid of the spirometer, to discover how inefficiently they did breathe; in other words, how much below the normal was the amount of air they were usually inspiring. Encouragement might also be found in the matter—incentive, that is, to learn how to breathe and exercise correctly and scientifically—if mention were here made categorically of the very profound influences upon certain physiological processes of our organisation which are brought about if we would but mend our ways in this respect. Space will only allow of a few such to be detailed.

1. The circulation is improved and equalised. This implies much more than appears on the surface: it means that the blood is made to flow from any congested internal organ (such as the liver, stomach, etc.) towards the peripheries—that is, the extremities and everywhere where there is the capillary system—the changing-place between the venous and the arterial blood; thus we at the same time warm our extremities and relieve internal congestion. In other words, “to bring the blood to the surface” in many conditions of ill-health is of paramount importance.

2. It will strengthen the action of the heart and lungs. For lack of proper breathing exercises the heart's walls get thin, the expansive power of the lungs' tissue gets less, and as a consequence, when any little extra strain is thrown upon either, permanent damage is often the result.

3. In any tendency to constipation, indigestion and similar conditions, such exercises are especially beneficial, and that both by flushing the system with more oxygen and by mechanically exerting pressure on the different organs—thus giving those latter what is actually a good massaging!

4. Indirectly, such exercises must of necessity be splendid for “nerves,” as we thus get these supplied with a larger amount of purified blood, and of course this must result in better and heightened nerve and brain action.

And all this—and much more which we have not space enough to deal with—being so, it might now be well asked, who and what class of individuals would benefit by these exercises. The list is a long one, and would include practically all growing children and adolescents—in order that adenoids, narrow chests, debility in general, malnutrition and a host of other abnormal states might be either cured or prevented. Innumerable adults would also benefit by such exercises: those who are in health, in order to keep so; those who are depressed mentally, or who are suffering from constipation, dyspepsia, anÆmia, obesity, debility, etc.

Even those who are “getting on” in years could, with care and caution, go through such exercises to advantage, providing, that is, that their heart, lungs and blood vessels are fairly normal; it is only where there is serious organic disease such exercises must be withheld.

Thus we have a big field for such a system which Mrs Lazarus has described so fully in this little work of hers; it deserves wide recognition, and my final word to the reader is not only to keep the book as a “boon companion,” but to encourage others to purchase it and to carry out its most excellent teachings.

J. Stenson Hooker, M.D.